Sweden joins Nato

March 7th 2024

After months of delays, thanks to Türkiye and Hungary, on March 7th, 2024, Sweden became the 32nd member of NATO.

Sweden had been neutral since the Napoleonic wars, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, prompted it to apply to join NATO. (Finland applied at the same time, and joined the alliance in April 2023.)

Sweden had stayed neutral for over 200 years, through both World Wars, but decided to join NATO now. That should say something about the gravity of the situation in Europe.

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One of Putin’s stated reasons for invading Ukraine, was preventing the enlargement of NATO. Well, since both Finland and Sweden joined the alliance, NATO not only got two new members, but the Baltic Sea, in all practical terms, became a NATO sea.

St. Petersburg is squeezed at the eastern end of the relatively narrow Gulf of Finland, and the exclave of Kaliningrad (which used to be called Königsberg until 1946) is sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, which are both NATO members, like all the rest of the countries bordering the Baltic Sea.

Strategically this is not the best result for Russia, and probably not the one Putin had in mind.